Crosswalk Talk: Celebrity Christian Interviews - Dr. Bobby Duke on Why the Ancient Manuscripts Still Matter Today

0:00Looking for a simple way to stay rooted in God's Word every day? The Daily Bible Devotion app by Salem Media gives you morning and evening devotionals designed to encourage, inspire, and keep you connected with scripture. Plus, you'll enjoy daily Bible trivia and humor, a fun way to learn and share a smile while growing in your face. Get the Daily Bible Devotion app for free on both iOS and Android. Start an in-your-day with God's Word. Search for the Daily Bible Devotion app in the App Store or Google Play Store and download it today. Life Audio Dr. Duke, thanks for joining me. Oh, well, thank you for having me, Michael. Dr. Bobby Duke, Chief Curatorial Officer at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC, which has an incredible new Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit. Dr. Duke, like I was telling you before we started here, I visited the Museum of the Bible last fall. I was blown away, just blown away by everything there. I could have spent weeks there. I had like three hours, you know, that's how it usually is with people at museums.

1:03Unfortunately, for me, I did not get to see this Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit. It opened after I left, but I'm looking forward to seeing it in the future. Give us a preview of what this Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit is and why you're at it, tell us the significance of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Yeah, well, thank you, Michael, for asking about our current special exhibit that is opened in November of 2025 and will be open until September, right after Labor Day of 26. So we have an extensive exhibit. This is an exhibit that was put together by the Israel Antiquities Authority and they are actually traveling it around North America. So right before it came to us, it was at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Seamy Valley, California. And then it came to us and then it'll travel to a couple other spots in North America because it is the 75th anniversary tour of the Dead Sea Scrolls that were found in the late 1940s. The exhibit itself tells much more than just the Dead Sea Scrolls. It really is an entire exhibit about what we call second temple

2:04Judaism to give us a sense of what life was like two thousand years ago that arguably the most significant archaeological discovery of that era from that era was the Dead Sea Scrolls. They read a press release here for just to kind of sum up what's going on there. It says that the Dead Sea Scrolls artifacts are the oldest known copies of biblical text and are one of the greatest archaeological finds of our lifetime. Dr. August, my understanding that when the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered, some skeptics around the world, some skeptics of the Bible expected the contents to differ from what we had at the time and what we still have. But when scholars, of course, started looking at what the Dead Sea Scrolls contained, it was largely what we already had, correct? Correct. Well, there were basically, if you think, kind of three groupings of biblical texts or of texts that were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, the biblical texts, the ones that were texts that were already known but were not in the Bible, and then there were documents that are often labeled as sectarian documents. These are ones that were not known before in the history

3:07of literature and were connected to that group at Kumran, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered. But as you're right, the biblical texts were the first wave of research simply because you had something to compare to that we already knew. Before the scrolls were found our earliest biblical texts were what are called the masoretic texts from right around the thousand AD. Give or take fifty or a hundred years either side of a thousand AD, whereas the Dead Sea Scrolls, some of them are dated back to the second, even third century BC. So over a thousand years earlier than our best texts before 1947. And as you were saying, the thought was what kind of new revelations and or just shocking scandals that we're going to find when we look into these texts. And in general, there was a lot of fidelity between what we have from 2000 years ago and what we can compare to with the masoretic text from a thousand years ago. There are some variants in any good modern English study Bible. You'll see in your notes in the margins, it'll say maybe Dead Sea Scrolls

4:09read or Kumran reads. But if you actually as a reader of an English Bible, look at all those notes and start asking yourself how significant is this, you're going to realize that most of them are incredibly minor. So yes, the Dead Sea Scrolls give us a lot of confidence in the biblical text. Yeah, there's nothing in it. Of course, Dead Sea Scrolls is the Old Testament, but when we're talking about the New Testament in terms of variances, there's nothing that says that changes doctrine. I think that's what what scholars often say. There's nothing that changes doctrine. Would you agree that studying the Dead Sea Scrolls can kind of strengthen the faith of Bible readers? So again, I can only speak for myself, but as a scholar of Dead Sea Scrolls, I did my PhD at UCLA in the Scrolls, worked on some of the airmanic non-biblical documents. But my study of the scrolls particularly the biblical scrolls has only given me more confidence in the Bible that I read. And again, it even gives me more confidence for those who haven't had the ability to study Hebrew like I who are reading their English, you can trust your English Bibles. And it goes back to these manuscripts that again are over 2000 years old. And then this of course is at the Museum of the

5:13Bible through when? Through September. So we have it for another nine months and it is one where it is truly stunning to be able to look at the biblical text. And currently, we're going to have three waves of text between when it opened in November and September. Dead Sea Scroll fragments and texts are only allowed to be outside of Israel for three months at a time, a preservation reasons. So we will get during our nine and a half month exhibit three different sets of eight documents. And then when they go back to Israel, they have to hibernate for five years in climate controlled and light controlled vaults just to make sure 50, 100, 200 years from now scholars and the world still have access to these texts that are truly fragile. Let's talk about a couple of other parts of the exhibit. One is called them. I cannot pronounce this. Maybe you can help me out. The Macdala, the Macdala Stone, M-A-G-D-A-L-A Macdala Stone. What is that? So the Magdala Stone and the word Magdala is the city of Magdala on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee. We are familiar with this from reading the New Testament because it is the hometown of

6:18Mary Magdalene. She was from Magdala and in the a decade or more ago, they were doing a construction project at the site of Magdala. They were building a Catholic retreat center and guest house. And during the construction, they hit the floor of a first century synagogue. Well, in Israel, whenever you have a building project and you hit archaeology, your building project gets sideline until you know what is actually under the ground there. And this first century synagogue has now actually been built into the architecture of the guest house. So it is still there today. You can go to this first century synagogue. In the middle of that excavation, they found this limestone table, roughly say two feet by three feet, carved and decorated with imagery from the temple in Jerusalem. So someone took their knowledge of the temple in Jerusalem, came up to the Sea of Galilee, carved this limestone table that is the perfect size for rolling out tourist scrolls. Again, we don't know was it used for rolling out tourist scrolls, but it was found right in the center of the synagogue. And it was one that would be perfect on Shabbat, on Sabbath to roll out

7:22tourist scrolls. And we actually have the original here at the museum. Several weeks ago, we had one of the excavators from Magdalene here and just was not aware that we had the original. And she said, while the the fact similarly you have there is truly one of the best I've ever seen. And I had to pause her talk and say, we actually have the original. Let's let's briefly talk about other parts of the museum. There's a there's when I was there, I one of the things that I remember and enjoyed looking at was this old church or it's it's a I forgot what it begins with an M. You're going to have to really help me here for this one. What was that though? It's it's it's it not only has biblical archeological, archeological significance, but also has a theological significance as well. Tell us about that. Looking for a simple way to stay rooted in God's word every day, the Daily Bible Devotion app by Salem Media gives you morning and evening devotionals designed to encourage, inspire and keep you connected with scripture. Plus, you'll enjoy Daily Bible trivia and humor,

8:28a fun way to learn and share a smile while growing in your faith. Get the Daily Bible Devotion app for free on both iOS and Android. Start an end your day with God's word. Search for the Daily Bible Devotion app in the App Store or Google Play Store and download it today. Absolutely. So it's called the McGito Mosaic. Mosaic are these floors of churches from I mean, the Greco-Roman period all the way up to the Byzantine period where you use little pieces of glass and or stone to create motifs or images or depictions on the floor. Well, like I said earlier, there was a construction project at a prison in Israel called the McGito prison just down the road from Tel McGito, which is most people see as the site of Armageddon. But inside this prison, they were doing construction project while doing the project. They hit this Mosaic floor. Construction project stopped. You excavate this floor and when it was all said and done, archaeologists date this floor to about 230 AD. So to put that in context, that's a hundred years before Constantine.

9:35That's a hundred years before the Nicene Creed. And why that's significant is that window of say that first century up until Constantine could often be viewed by scholars as a free-for-all in Christian theology, a free-for-all in Christian practice. But this Mosaic floor from our earliest church ever discovered has perfect theology. It shows them practicing the Eucharist and it even mentions a centurion, a workman, and five women in the inscriptions on the floor. So we get the sense of what Paul was talking about when he said, here there is no Greek or Jews, slave or free male or female, but we're all one in Christ. And the most significant piece as you're mentioning theologically, on one of the inscriptions, it mentions a woman named Keptis, who's to be honored because she gave the table to the honor of the God Jesus Christ. So we have the earliest statement anywhere outside of scripture of the divinity of Jesus Christ a hundred years before you actually have things like the Nicene Creed. Perfect Christian Orthodox theology right

10:37here on this Mosaic floor. And as I was mentioning you before we went live, there's only one place in the world where you can see the oldest church ever discovered and our oldest pieces of scripture ever discovered. And that's here Museum of the Bible. Let's have a very close. Let's just give people an overview of the Museum of the Bible. We've talked about some specific parts of it. One thing that I was really impressed by Dr. Duke when I went there is that this is not an old museum. It's a new museum, of course, opened in the past, what decade or two, 15 years or so, but on our 10th anniversary, okay, I was close there, but it's not just old stuff. In fact, there's lots of high-tech displays. It's very family-friendly, kid-friendly. You could take a child there, a teen there, and they're going to have a good time. What do you want people to know about the Museum of the Bible who might, who have never been there, who might be wondering what it is? Yeah, what, go ahead. Yeah, no. So I would say that even at the heart of our mission is that really we want to display how the Bible has been a transformative force in history. And through all of our exhibits,

11:42whether they be our history floor that walks you from our earliest knowledge of scripture all the way up to even now we have one displayed the very first iPhone that ever downloaded the U version app. I mean, so we have this whole sweep of history, but we have other floors that focus on the stories of the Bible. So we have a Hebrew Bible interactive walkthrough in 20 minutes, particularly if you have family or church communities or others, they'd struggle with biblical literacy. In 20 minutes, you can go through this Hebrew Bible experience and understand the whole backbone of the Old Testament. We have, as you said, a children's gallery down on our first floor that actually has biblical themes for children just to play because we know particularly when we have families that have little kids and older just have a place to kind of relax for a bit and play with kids in a biblical friendly environment is fantastic. So I would say from the history of the Bible to the stories of the Bible and ultimately the impact of the Bible, we have a whole floor dedicated to how the Bible has impacted art, literature, science. So this is a one-stop shop to get the sense of why is the Bible interesting? Why is the Bible important? And why is the Bible something

12:47that everyone needs to know about? Yeah, and like I said, you could spend weeks in there, any good museum you can say that about and you could spend weeks in the museum of the Bible if you want to, but you could also just get a three-hour overview if you just have that amount of time, but it's well worth a visit, family-friendly, enjoyable, it's awesome. I highly encourage people to check out it's in Washington DC and this exhibit, The Dead Sea Scrolls, runs through September, is that right? That is correct. Alright, Dr. Duke, thanks so much. Thank you so much Michael and again, welcome to you and anyone else who wants to come to The Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit. If you like today's episode, please subscribe and leave a five-star review. That's how we help more people just like you find the show. A big thanks to the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the podcast. If you go to LifeAudio.com, you will find dozens of other faith-centered podcasts in their network. See you next time!

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